Cake making

Backblipped, as Steve didn't bring the laptop back with him on his final visit of the day to raid the house for useful stuff!!


We went round to Christina's house to borrow her kitchen to make a birthday cake for Steve, and Hayley who shares a birthday with him, who we happen to be staying with! Ben had his first real experience of helping to make cake batter. As much as I'm not a control-freak in most areas when it comes to Ben, I've yet to relinquish control of my kitchen so it was as much a learning experience for me as it was for Ben! He and Ede loved scooping out the butter, pouring out the sugar and flour, and Ben learnt how to break eggs into a cup (Chris picked out the pieces of eggshell afterwards).

Ben and Ede loved helping and I loved watching. They did get bored once it was all in the mixer, so Chris and I finished off splitting it into thirds and adding various extras to each third. There was too much in the third which we turned into chocolate sponge, and so the leftover batter went into making these cute little mini star cupcakes!

The reason we were at Christina's baking? Well apart from it turning into a regular Wednesday morning thing to go to her house while Little Fishes is on holiday, my kitchen is no longer accessible for cooking in. The builders managed to cut through a water pipe on Tuesday so they turned the water off, and we are now also waiting on updated drawings from engineers regarding steelwork which now has to go into the party wall as requested by the Building Inspector - who also said we have to have a concrete slab base in the kitchen diner rather than a traditional sprung wooden floor. Sigh. Half the dining room is in the front room (at least there is a floor in there now!) and the other half is in the kitchen, and there's no floor in between the kitchen and the rest of the house.

Once the cake was baked we headed off to Hayley's house for a party food lunch, and Ben got stuck in playing with the kids there. He didn't have a nap and it showed, he was tired and not concentrating although he didn't have any accidents despite me taking his nappy off and leaving him bare-bottomed again. I showed him the new location of the potty and left him to it!

In between raiding our house for bedding and other useful stuff I finally got chance to sandwich the cake together and ice it: it's become a neopolitan birthday cake! Looks good and tastes VERY sweet according to Steve. He doesn't have a sweet tooth. All the more for the rest of us ;o)

Ben didn't go to bed at bedtime either and ended up sitting with us as we had our birthday Indian takeaway - slowly slipping into dopiness. Steve took him up to bed eventually and said he'd go and get mummy, and by the time mummy went up he was fast asleep. Mummy didn't last all that much longer to be honest....